PROSECUTIONS: BLACKBURN MAGISTRATES’ COURT

PRINCIPAL OFFENCE CATEGORY: Theft And Handling

Table 1

| March 2016 - March 2017 | |-------------------------| | Convictions | 526 | | Unsuccessful | 32 | | TOTAL | 558 |

The counting unit for CPS records is the defendant in a case, as opposed to the number of offences, or the number of cases. Thus, if a single set of proceedings involves more than one defendant, then each defendant is counted, and the outcome is recorded for each defendant.

1. The data in the table shows the number of defendants finalised at a Named Court.

2. The Named Court is defined as the court where the earliest hearing of any type for any offence for the defendant was heard or was due to be heard.

3. Prosecution finalisations where the Court Name has not been recorded in the Case Management System (CMS) will not be included in Named Court data.

4. Convictions comprise guilty pleas, convictions after trial and proceedings which are proved in absence.

5. Unsuccessful Outcomes comprise prosecutions dropped, administrative finalisations, discharged committals and cases acquitted or dismissed following a contested hearing.

(1) The data reported in the table are on the principal offence basis. (2) The prosecutions data reported by principal offence category are understated. Outcomes which resulted in an administrative finalisation or incomplete proceedings, where a principal offence category is not allocated, have been excluded.

Principal Offence Category ‘Theft & Handling Stolen Goods’ includes offences of theft from shops/vehicles, handling stolen goods, going equipped for stealing and aggravated vehicle taking, theft by an employee, theft of a pedal cycle, abstracting electricity, theft from automatic machine or meter or interference with a motor vehicle.

1. The Principal Offence Category is allocated at the conclusion of the prosecution proceeding against a defendant to indicate the type and seriousness of the charges brought.
2. The Principal Offence Category indicates the most serious offence with which the defendant is charged at the time of finalisation. Where the nature of the charges alters during the life of a case, the Principal Offence at the time of finalisation may be different than would have seemed appropriate at an earlier stage of proceedings. In all such cases the Principal Offence category to be recorded is that which applies at finalisation, regardless of whether this is more serious, or less serious, than would have applied earlier in the life of the case.
3. The Principal Offence Category comprises a range of individual offences. These cannot be disaggregated to report prosecutions data by specific offence.

1) CPS data are available through its Case Management System (CMS) and associated Management Information System (MIS). The CPS collects data to assist in the effective management of its prosecution functions. The CPS does not collect data that constitutes official statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.
2) These data have been drawn from the CPS’s administrative IT system, which (as with any large scale recording system) is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. The figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded by the CPS. We are committed to improving the quality of our data and from mid-June 2015 introduced a new data assurance regime which may explain some unexpected variance in some future data sets.
3) The official statistics relating to crime and policing are maintained by the Home Office (HO) and the official statistics relating to sentencing, criminal court proceedings, offenders brought to justice, the courts and the judiciary are maintained by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).